Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Published Writings
  3. Periodicals
  4. Journalism
  5. per.00998

All Humbug

About This Item

  • Title: All Humbug
  • Date: 22 October 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00998
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 22 October 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Thara Michaelis Kaylen Michaelis Jason Stacy Karie Cobb Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "All Humbug." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00998.xml (TEI)
image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

ALL HUMBUG.—

Yesterday the Herald1 undertook to show by statistics that there were upwards of 25,000 tailors thrown out of employ in New York. We have ascertained from a gentleman who knows that this is all sheer humbug. Mr. Reporter visits these wholesale clothing houses and is put off with any story which the ingenuity of his informant may choose to invent. No wholesale clothing house retains permanently any regular number of hands—sometimes they employ few, sometimes many, according to the necessities of their trade. When these houses are driven they will, for the purpose of securing additional help, establish depots in the midst of journeymen tailors’ residences, and there have been several such in the 16th ward of this city. The trade is very much depressed just now, as is every other, but the number out of employ is exaggerated. To show the unreliability of these statistics we have only to say that the reporter of the Herald entered the store of our informant, and in the absence of the proprietors was told by the boy that they usually employed 1500 hands, but owing to the dull times the firm had been necessitated to discharge 500. When asked why he did this, the boy replied: “Oh, I know all the others in the trade were cutting it fat, and I thought it wouldn’t do for us to be behind.”

So with the cloakmakers. The Evening Post2 had a table exhibiting the greatest distress in the cloak trade, which was in a great measure all bosh. Houses that employ one cutter and perhaps 16 girls, were put down as employing 16 cutters and 400 girls, and so on.

We all know things are bad enough, but why indulge in such “wasteful and ridiculous excess” in attempting to depict them.

Notes:

1. The New York Herald was one of the leading New York City papers during Whitman’s lifetime. It was run by James Gordon Bennett, Sr., and his son and leaned Democrat, while loudly proclaiming its political independence. It was published from 1835 to 1924. See also The New York Herald (Poems in Periodicals)." [back]

2. The New-York Evening Post was a well-respected daily newspaper, originally founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801 and edited by poet William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) between 1847 and 1879. For more information, see Ted Widmer, "New York Evening Post," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]

Back to top